A safety cabinet can be used for the onsite storage of flammable material at a manufacturing plant, for example. The safety cabinet can be provided to insulate flammable material stored within it from the direct effects of an external fire to help prevent (for at least some designated period of time) the contents of the safety cabinet from themselves igniting and adding to the deleterious effect of the original fire.
Venting a safety cabinet is typically not necessary for fire protection. However, a user of a safety cabinet may desire to vent the safety cabinet, as according to either an applicable law or an internal standard operating procedure. Venting the safety cabinet can help, in some instances, reduce the amount of odorous, ignitable vapor and/or hazardous vapor emitted by the materials stored within the safety cabinet. In such cases, it is desirable for the venting system to be installed so as to avoid adversely affecting the intended performance of the cabinet during a fire. In practice, however, venting a safety cabinet can be hard to do without compromising its specified fire performance rating. In fact, a vented cabinet could compromise the ability of the cabinet to protect its contents from a fire. During a fire, vapor from the contents stored in the safety cabinet can be emitted. If the ventilation system compromises the integrity of the safety cabinet, these ignitable vapors can combust to further contribute to the fire's destructive potential.
Previous safety cabinets have included a mechanism for closing the venting system that is thermally-activated. However, such conventional mechanisms can be very expensive.
There is a continued need in the art to provide additional solutions to enhance the venting of a safety cabinet. For example, there is a continued need for techniques for venting a safety cabinet using equipment that is economical and that can help maintain the performance of the safety cabinet in the event of a fire.
It will be appreciated that this background description has been created by the inventor to aid the reader, and is not to be taken as an indication that any of the indicated problems were themselves appreciated in the art. While the described principles can, in some aspects and embodiments, alleviate the problems inherent in other systems, it will be appreciated that the scope of the protected innovation is defined by the attached claims, and not by the ability of any disclosed feature to solve any specific problem noted herein.